Patients with low platelet counts often require platelet transfusion. This is particularly crucial in the treatment of patients with cancer or massive trauma. The use of platelet transfusions has increased dramatically since 1980s, but a safe, long-term platelet storage method remains unavailable. The demonstration of successful, refrigerated storage of platelets for extended lengths of time, for example, 7 days or longer, would dramatically change the current practice of platelet transfusion in the Western World. Approximately 3,000,000 doses of platelets are used in the United States every year, and account for sales of ˜$1.5 Billion annually. The current short shelf-life represents a major handicap to convert platelet products into effective commodities. Depending on the time of the year, month or even week, up to 20% of products can be wasted due to expiration. In the meantime, there are moments of platelets shortages due to unpredictable increased usage. The extension of platelet product shelf-life would strengthen the national inventory of platelets for oncological and trauma patients. An estimated 10-fold increase in the need of platelet and plasma products is expected by the US government in war casualties and massive trauma patients due to the 1 red cell: 1 platelet: 1 plasma product transfusion policy.
Current practice has platelets stored at 20 to 24° C. after preparation, which has a limited lifetime up to 5 days, primarily due to concerns about bacterial contamination. Bacterial contamination of platelet products for transfusion is a major safety problem in blood banking. The consequence of transfusion of contaminated products is increased morbi-mortality among a susceptible population of cancer patients (1). Different technologies have been developed aiming to minimize the risk of bacterial contamination including diversion pouches for collection, bacterial detection with automatic culture systems and pathogen reduction systems (2-6). While there has been a significant reduction in the number of cases of platelet transfusion associated sepsis, the risk of transfusion-associated sepsis ranges between 1 in 15,000 to 86,000 platelet transfusions (7, 8). Storage of platelets in cold temperatures, as is done for red cells, would reduce the proliferation of most bacteria and allow a longer period of storage (9), minimizing the current shortages (10) that the short storage time (5-day) for platelets approved by the FDA (11). Conventional cold storage of platelets, however, has been hampered by the discovery that the 24-hour recovery of chilled platelets was significantly reduced (14).
The development of a method to prevent platelet damage upon refrigeration is a much needed, and long sought after advance in blood banking. Such development would revolutionize the current method of platelet storage. The instant disclosure solves one or more of these deficiencies in the art.